Can we pray for the dead?
Andrew Goddard writes:To encourage and enable commemoration of the First World War, the Liturgical Committee of the Church of England recently produced a number of resources. They raise an interesting issue for evangelical Anglicans – what exercise we call back nearly praying for the expressionless? It is in some ways appropriate that this centenary should bring this question to the fore as, in the words, of Alan Wilkinson, in his classic report The Church building of England and the Start World War, "In 1914 public prayer for the dead was uncommon in the Church of England; past the end of the war information technology had go widespread" (176).
The precedents
The practice is, of course, never direct addressed within Scripture either as something encouraged or prohibited, the only possible reference to it being the apocryphal 2 Macc 12.43ff (the merits that 2 Tim i.16ff is an example requires postulating – with no evidence – that Onesiphorus was dead). In that sense it has similarities with the practice of baby baptism – arguments depend on appeals to tradition and wider theology.
Even Calvin, strongly objecting to the practice, did non dispute that it appeared early in the church's history (Institutes III:5:10). Indeed, in the early tertiary century it could fifty-fifty be used to defend the view it was wrong to remarry after the death of ane's spouse (Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity, Chapter eleven) and Augustine also supported prayers for the departed (On Care to exist had for the expressionless, 17). Subsequently the practice was bound upwardly with item medieval Cosmic doctrines and practices which the Reformers strongly rejected and Cranmer, having kept such prayers in the 1549 Prayer Book, removed them totally from the 1552 revision. This explains the situation described past Wilkinson in 1914 (although prayers for the dead were included in 1900 during the Boer War and in a service for the celebration of Queen Victoria in 1902).
The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke positively of the practice on All Souls Twenty-four hour period 1914 but an explicit prayer for the departed issued by authorisation for the outset time in 1917 brought forth protests from evangelicals Bishops Chavasse (Liverpool) and Knox (Manchester) although they were clearly in a minority. The inclusion of such prayers in the 1928 Prayer Book was part of the reason for evangelical rejection of it (although not prominent in the campaign) and when Serial two included them in the 1960s Colin Buchanan objected. Recognising the divisive nature of the subject, an Archbishops' Commission was fix with evangelicals represented by J.I. Packer and Michael Green. Information technology was able in its important 1971 study Prayer and the Departed to reach understanding on a prayer which it suggested "could be used ex animo past Anglicans of all theological persuasions" as the wording "asks for such things as nosotros are scripturally persuaded are in accordance with God'due south will and have not already been granted" (para 56). A flavor of evangelical views at that fourth dimension tin exist gained from two articles in Churchman past Arthur Bennett (1967) and leading layman Hugh Craig (1972) (who, as a fellow member of the Liturgical Commission, later proposed calculation "co-ordinate to your promises" to the Culling Service Book Rite A to make its prayer more acceptable to evangelicals). Conservative evangelicals have remained strongly opposed to whatsoever such prayers appearing with the apparent approval of the Church of England (run into for example David Philipps in 2007) but it has generally not been a thing of reflection and fence in recent years amongst the wider evangelical constituency.
The prayers
What of these new prayers which have not been discussed or approved by General Synod or the bishops and were objected to past at to the lowest degree one member of the Liturgical Commission?
The General Resources include a responsorial prayer of commemoration which asks Jesus to remember those of the war generation. It concludes by request the Begetter to "call up your holy promise, and wait with beloved on all your people, living and departed", and to remember and "concord for ever" diverse groups of those who experienced the war. At that place are likewise Propers for a Eucharist of Remembrance (itself an intriguing title given the eucharist is in remembrance of Christ). These include a collect, suggested areas of intercession, and a Mail-Communion prayer ending with wording from the Russian Kontakion of the Expressionless:
Lord of the nations,
Saviour and gauge of all:
remove from human hearts all bitterness and hate,
grant to those who accept died in war your mercy and forgiveness
and bring us all to the peace of your eternal Kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who suffered and died,
and now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end. Amen.Pray for all those who mourn, for the establishing of a just peace and stability in the world, for victims of terror, those maimed and injured in state of war, the lost and forgotten, those whose names are not remembered, those haunted past dark memories and the depressed, the homeless and the broken–hearted; those who died violently and those who died as a result of injury, for those who went to the grave unable to tell their stories.
Lord God, in this Eucharist which we take shared, you accept spoken your word of life and nourished us with the mysteries of Christ'south body and blood; bring u.s. with all who have died in combat or through the injuries of state of war, to know the joys of heaven. We ask this through Jesus Christ, who lived and died and was raised to newness of life, to whom be glory in every age and for eternity. Amen. Give residue, O Christ, to your servants with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting. All And weeping o'er the grave we brand our vocal: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
The issues
What should evangelical Anglicans make of these prayers? Given that the subject is rarely if ever a affair of discussion amongst evangelicals I am interested whether many have simply lost interest in the bailiwick or fifty-fifty come to accept the practise to some degree. Five things strike me in particular as of business organisation well-nigh these prayers.
Commencement, they are, I think, significantly different from those prayers that have been proposed in the by in that those for whom we are encouraged to pray are, in many cases, people with whom those praying have no personal human relationship. The pastoral justification that can be offered in some circumstances (Michael Vasey wrote that in response to the practice the Reformers' "drastic remedy rooted out a great error just at the price of leaving no voice for the love of the bereaved" ("The Saints and the Departed" in Introducing Promise of His Glory, Grove Worship 116)) is therefore non available in this case.
Second, nor is in that location an explicit ecclesial relationship in Christ as in that location is non a sense of praying for "the whole Church, living and departed in the Lord Jesus" (the wording proposed by Prayer and the Departed) but rather prayers for "those who take died in war", "all who have died in combat or through the injuries of state of war". This is, in other words, discrete from any doctrine of the communion of the saints and offers prayers for categories of the departed as we might pray for categories of the living – without any reference to whether or not they are in Christ.
Third, non but are the prayers detached from a Christological and ecclesiological context, they risk feeding dangerous false ideas that salvation can be plant autonomously from Christ and the myth that expiry in war may in some sense ready people apart and fifty-fifty earn them redemption: "grant to those who have died in war your mercy and forgiveness", "bring usa with all who have died in combat or through the injuries of war, to know the joys of heaven".
Fourth, this shows that although the prayers are optional and not fully authorised, there appears to have been little or no endeavour to take on lath the concerns of evangelicals or to respect the hard work done in Prayer and the Departed (and subsequently) to endeavour to notice forms of words for commended public liturgies that do not cause offence or depart from Anglican doctrine.
Fifth, and almost fundamentally, the prayers raise major theological questions about whether they are in whatsoever manner consistent with Anglican teaching. That is evident both in the specific wording cited above and in the general invitation that nosotros offering unspecified intercessions for "those who died violently and those who died as a issue of injury, for those who went to the grave unable to tell their stories". The question this raises is "For what can we pray for such a broad category given biblical and Anglican education? How can such prayers be faithful to justification past grace through organized religion in Christ lonely and the reality that "Just as people are destined to die once, and afterwards that to face up judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he volition appear a second time, not to behave sin, but to bring conservancy to those who are waiting for him" (Hebrews 9.27-28)?
The diction of these prayers seems only to fit with – and to implicitly commend – an eschatology of what might be termed "dynamic universalism" (every bit in John Hick and others). A theology, in other words, in which we tin can, mayhap should, continue to pray for those who accept died, including people unknown to us, even a century after their death, considering, rather than there being different and clearly differentiated post-mortem states, every private soul continues, after expiry, developing its relationship with God begun on earth, until ultimately, we pray, all humanity will exist perfected.
One would wait conservative evangelicals to object to these prayers (although I am not aware of a public critique) but what of others? Have charismatic evangelicals perchance followed the lead of Michael Mitton and Russ Parker in Requiem Healing and begun to tolerate or even encompass prayers for the dead? What of open evangelicals – is praying for the departed in this fashion a exercise which some take concluded nosotros need to acquire from other traditions and introduce within evangelicalism? In response to Chavasse's objections in 1917, Bishops Bell's biography (pp 828-31) records that Archbishop Davidson claimed that his prayer had non gone "across what has, I think, become very usual in the churches of all schools of thought, including very markedly some of the nigh Evangelical of our brethren" and that "a groovy many men of marked Evangelical opinion" would "thankfully" use the prayer (p 830). Can the same be said of evangelicals at present in response to these prayers offered to commemorate the war in and for which Davidson'southward earlier prayer was written?
This invitee mail service is by Andrew Goddard and also appears on the Fulcrum web site.
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